Q: Why did you decide to make music for Video games? What was the motivation?Jonah Senzel: I’ve been a gamer for as long as I can remember (even before I was a musician) so when I
started getting interested in playing music and music production the next logical step for me was to write music for games. A lot of my interest in game music also stemmed from just wanting to be part of the game development community and the game making process. I’ve always looked up to independant game developers, and contributing music is a way to make my mark on indie games.

Jonah Senzel

Q: You say that you work differently than other composers. How does this show up in your work?Jonah Senzel: For the Pony Island Soundtrack specifically I wrote a lot of the tracks in a very short
concentrated amount of time. There are a bunch of tracks on there that I wrote entirely in a 24
hour period which isn’t how most people do it. I think writing that way makes the music feel more
spontaneous. On the other hand Lately I’ve been writing across longer periods of time which I’ve
found makes music that feels more coherent and thought out, so there seem to be pros and cons
of both methods.

Q: The Pony Island Soundtrack is really cool. How would you describe the Pony Island soundtrack?Jonah Senzel: It’s really a soundtrack in two parts: the cheerful outer layer of retro chiptunes, and the darker glitch inspired sound lurking under the surface. The tone and structure of the soundtrack is really meant to match that of the world of Pony Island that Daniel Mullins has created.

Q: What was the biggest challenge with this soundtrack?Jonah Senzel: I would say the very beginning and very of the whole process were the hardest parts. At the
beginning finding the right overall sound for the project was difficult. I was sort of fumbling around trying to figure out the identity of the soundtrack and what sound would really fit the game which involved a fair amount of experimentation. The very end was also a little stressful because of all the technical aspects of getting everything organized and tying up the loose ends that you don’t think about until the very end like naming each track, file conversions, finding the right version of a save file etc. The very end of the development cycle is also where you start to feel that real time pressure to get everything out at the same time as the developer.

Q: Are you listening privately to video games music and is there a favorite one?Jonah Senzel: I don’t generally listen to game soundtracks outside of playing games, but I do greatly appreciate the work of fellow game composers. I would say my favorites are the soundtracks to Bastion And Transistor by Darren Korb. He’s really a master of creating genres. Chris Christodoulou is also one of my favorite game composers. He’s famous for the risk of rain soundtrack which is amazing (also being released by Black Screen Records on Vinyl alongside the Pony Island OST), but I also absolutely love his Soundtrack for Deadbolt . Chris also has a knack for making genre crossovers in really interesting ways. To me these two composers perfectly exemplify the modern Indie game composer, and how Indie games allow composers to create music for media in a truly unique fashion.

Q: What characterizes a good composer for you?Jonah Senzel: What makes a good composer really varies depending on the style, but overall the most
important thing in my eyes is being unique. If you take a look at composer demo reels, a lot of them will have music that’s trying to copy some mainstream commercial music trends like having huge Hans Zimmer style brass and percussion, john williams style themes, or for game composers music that tries to emulate old chiptunes or final fantasy soundtracks. This kind of promotion really goes against what it is to be a composer. The best soundtracks, whether for film, tv, or games, will always be those that are doing something new and unique. When you put yourself in the box of recreating someone else’s style you limit yourself in terms of adaptability to whatever you’re writing for. Being unique is important not just because you want to stand out as a composer, but also because you want your music to be as customized as possible to the project you’re working on. Darren Korb demonstrates this beautifully as he starts by essentially creating a genre of music for the world that the game is set in, and then sprinkles bits of music in that style all around the game. He even takes it a step further and includes songs with lyrics that emulate what people in that world would listen to. That dedication to crafting a custom made genre is what makes a great soundtrack. The music should be a living part of the game world that’s unique enough to be immediately recognizable and associated with that fictional place.

Q: Do you have a favorite musician (a Band for example) you would love to work with? And who is it?Jonah Senzel: I would absolutely love to work with Darren or Chris at some point since they’re both big
inspirations. In terms of bands I think radiohead or tame impala would be really cool to work with, just to see what their creative process is like.

Q: What are your next projects – could you tell us something about that?Jonah Senzel: Right now I’m working on another project with Daniel Mullins, the creator of Pony Island, it’s
called the Hex. The trailer here explains the basic premise. I’m super excited to be working with Daniel again! This project will include a lot of different musical styles since there are a variety of characters to write for, each with their own unique personalities. And as far as the game itself goes, everything I’ve played has been amazing and I’m looking forward to playing the finished product as much as anyone!

ICO-Radio: How did you prepare for that project? Where do you get your inspiration?Chris Remo: I was also a designer on Firewatch, and was on the story team, so I suppose my main preparation was simply being involved in the creation of the game.

ICO-Radio:What characterizes the soundtrack for you the most?Chris Remo: I wanted the soundtrack to be simple, approachable, human, and also a little unsettling. The world of Firewatch is beautiful and overwhelming, thanks to the work of our artists, so I thought most of the time the music should be fairly subtle, and complement the environments rather than try to overpower them. I am not an amazing performer, and while I’m not particularly proud of that, I think in this case it lends the guitar and piano performances a somewhat flawed and human-scale sensibility that works for this soundtrack.

ICO-Radio: How long it takes until a Track is finished?Chris Remo: Most of this music was written fairly quickly. I had several other roles on the game, including game design and working on the story, as well as the rest of the sound design, so music made up a minority of my total time spent on Firewatch. Usually I would perform a track, then show it to someone else like Jake to get a reaction. If the track seemed appropriate, it generally only got a few revisions before going in the game—or I would put it in the game immediately, then revise based on how it feels in the game. But usually the first take was at least relatively close to the final version, and if a track didn’t work I would just throw it away entirely rather than try and bang it into something that worked. Sometimes I would go back and grab pieces of discarded attempts, months later.

ICO-Radio:What characteristics must have your soundtracks, so they will not be repetitive and boring?Chris Remo: I don’t know if I have any specific principles that carry from soundtrack to soundtrack. Some people have compared this soundtrack to my music for Gone Home, which I totally understand, because they both use a lot of quiet guitar and electric piano, but the creation process was about as different as can possibly be—especially since on Gone Home I was a contract composer and on Firewatch I was a full-time developer. But if you look at other soundtracks I’ve done, like Thirty Flights of Loving and Spacebase DF-9, I think they sound very different, and I don’t think I had very similar thought processes in mind. In terms of repetition, it really depends. Spacebase DF-9 has a fully looping soundtrack, so I just tried to listen to the music a lot and make sure it didn’t get annoying—that’s a game where the music is truly „background music.“ Whereas Thirty Flights of Loving has looping music as well, but much of it is intentionally very in-your-face, because the whole vibe of the game is bombastic and fast and surprising. So in that case I just had totally different concerns in terms of how the repetition should work. On Gone Home, there’s not a single looping track—every piece was scored to a specific purpose—so I just had to do my best to make sure that each track fit the circumstances of the material it was accompanying. Firewatch was different to all of these, because some music was looping, some was scored to a specific scene, and some was non-looping but could play at different points for different players. Since I was also responsible for implementing all the music, not just composing and performing it, I was able to try out a lot of different approaches throughout the game. In the case of Firewatch I think I also kept the music from being boring by simply being very restrained in how much I use it. There’s never a case where the same music track plays twice in any given playthrough. Hopefully that meant people were glad when the music did appear, instead of being tired of it.

ICO-Radio: Are you listening privately to video games music and is there a favorite one?Chris Remo: I don’t listen to a lot of video game music in my spare time—not because there isn’t a lot of good video game music, I just find that most of it works better in context rather than alone. But I’ve been listening to Jessica Curry’s score to Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture recently. She is probably the most impressive video game composer currently working, I think. She makes me feel like a total idiot fool by comparison, like I shouldn’t be allowed to make video game music.

ICO-Radio: Have you rituals that you do before you start your work on a soundtrack?Chris Remo: Nope!

ICO-Radio: Are there composers who inspired you when writing soundtracks or have made you to take this job?Chris Remo: When I was growing up, I was absolutely obsessed with the three in-house LucasArts composers: Peter McConnell, Michael Land, and Clint Bajakian. I listened to their music all the time, it was ridiculous. I never had any ambition to actually go into video game composition or development myself, I just thought their music was great. In particular, Peter McConnell’s Grim Fandango score is I think one of the truly great video game soundtracks. Also, Matt Uelman, the former Blizzard North composer who created the Diablo and Diablo II soundtracks, is criminally under-discussed. I guarantee that anyone who ever played Diablo has a tiny part of their brain that will always activate powerfully whenever they hear Uelman’s impossibly atmospheric guitar work from that game. The thing I love about composers like Uelman, McConnell, and Curry is that they all operate far outside of the typical video game idiom, bringing in ideas and techniques and sounds from the classical tradition, the rock and pop and jazz traditions, and so on.

ICO-Radio: Can you say something about other new projects from you?Chris Remo: No, because there aren’t any yet! We’re still figuring out what’s next. I have absolutely no idea at this point.